AI makes it “easier than ever” for adversaries to target U.S. military, experts say

Amid the United States’ war with Iran, an Iran-linked adversary used American-developed artificial intelligence to try to target U.S. naval forces, according to a report released by Anthropic last week.

The group, which Anthropic did not identify but labeled a “threat actor,” used Claude AI to compile open-source information to identify U.S. naval positions and develop targeting recommendations, according to the company. The account was banned and Anthropic shared the information with the U.S. government to disrupt the threat, it said.

Scenarios like this could become increasingly common, experts said, as America’s adversaries turn to AI to boost military operations. 

Anthropic’s findings are consistent with how Iran has been using technology to support its strategic objectives, including in its conflict with the U.S. and Israel, experts said. But, the report sheds light on how increasingly capable AI models can expedite the once-tedious task of aggregating and analyzing large volumes of publicly available data.

“They’re using it to enhance the way they already operate and the tactics or the techniques that they’re already used to doing,” said Nikita Shah, a senior fellow with the Intelligence, National Security, and Technology program at the bipartisan nonprofit think tank Center for Strategic and International Studies. 

“It just makes it much more effective, much more efficient, much faster as to how the models can help them carry out those different attack methods,” she said.

In the case highlighted in Anthropic’s report, publicly available information including satellite imagery, ship and aircraft tracking data, and captions on public military photographs was used to provide a more comprehensive picture of U.S. naval movements. AI also can help refine the targeting of missiles and drones, increase visibility of the battlefield and be used for monitoring, Shah said. 

“The new threat is just that it is now easier than ever before for adversaries to be able to understand what the U.S. military is doing,” said Sam Bresnick, a research fellow at Georgetown’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology. “It is getting much harder for the U.S. military to cloak or to obscure its activities.”

Access to Claude is blocked in Iran, but adversaries can easily create accounts using VPNs and foreign phone numbers. 

Before Anthropic’s report, a July report released by threat intelligence provider Recorded Future found that AI likely accelerated Iran’s existing cyber and military capabilities. Given Russia’s support of Iran’s military, the report said, there is an increased likelihood that “AI-enabled tactics and capabilities, refined in Ukraine, contributed to Iranian drone attacks against Israel and Persian Gulf states.”

In addition to informing its kinetic warfare efforts, Iran has leveraged AI for “soft war” — which does not involve force, but instead, tactics such as shaping the information landscape and cyberwarfare.

On social media, Iranian embassies around the world regularly post AI-generated videos critical of the U.S. and Israel. Anthropic also found three Iranian state-aligned accounts using Claude for public influence campaigns, where “Iranian institutions produce propaganda as both a religious and strategic duty,” according to the report. In one campaign involving Iran’s war with the U.S. and Israel, actors falsely attributed claims to research institutions like think tanks Brookings and RAND to create a sense of credibility.

The accounts used Claude to manage and operate digital operations, for language translations and to make posts seem attributable to independent news sources. Their content was dispersed across social media platforms like X, TikTok and Instagram.

This sort of use of AI is not unique to Iran, nor to the way adversaries have been leveraging cyber capabilities for military purposes and to gain greater situational awareness, Shah and others said. 

“Adversaries in general are using AI capabilities,” she said. “They tend to be using it to uplift what they’re already doing, or to enhance or refine what they’re already doing.”

It’s also not the first time American-made technology has been used against U.S. interests. In the Russia-Ukraine conflict, for example, Russia is deploying drones guided by U.S.-made technology for attacks on Ukraine. 

The U.S., Bresnick said, has so far maintained an advantage over its adversaries in terms of situational awareness. But increasingly advanced AI models are allowing other countries to catch up — something the Pentagon is already working to combat, he added. 

“Because they are aware now that less sophisticated actors can understand what they’re doing, we’re about to see a great deal of countermeasures to try to reestablish a level of potential surprise and ability to operate with more secrecy,” he said.

One of the suggested countermeasures, according to a proposal reviewed by CBS News, includes creating AI “personas” that can mimic realistic life patterns and obscure “digital exhaust” to throw off adversarial tracking and surveillance efforts.

When asked for comment, a Pentagon official said they do not discuss matters of intelligence.

As AI has advanced, the national security community has been anticipating adversaries using the technology to refine, scale and amplify operations, Shah said. Anthropic’s report, she said, points to a wider issue where tech companies are entering the unfamiliar territory of the adversarial threat landscape.

“I kind of read it and I think well, what did these companies, what did the national security community think would happen when you make these models as accessible as they are?” she said. “Of course the bad guys are going to want to exploit them in different ways.”